Your Right to Know

The Warren County prosecutor will not charge a Dayton-area superintendent who blasted Gov. John Kasich’s school-funding plan and, in a letter, urged parents to vote him out of office.

Prosecutor David P. Fornshell said that while Franklin School District Superintendent Arnol F. Elam may have violated state law by using public resources to campaign against an elected official, he has closed his criminal investigation.

Fornshell said he decided not to file charges after Elam pledged to reimburse the district for the $539 used to produce the letter and the Franklin Board of Education promised to put safeguards in place so similar violations would not happen again.

The prosecutor opened an investigation last week after receiving a complaint from a Warren County resident. State Democrats dubbed the probe a “witch hunt.”

Elam sent a letter to parents, criticizing Kasich’s school-funding plan and urging them to join “in an active campaign to ensure Gov. Kasich and any legislator who supports him are not re-elected.” Like 60 percent of Ohio school districts, Franklin schools would get no additional state aid under Kasich’s two-year budget proposal.

Fornshell said Elam and the district “have every right to utilize public funds to notify parents of students in the (school district), as well as the public itself, as to the effects of proposed legislation.” However, inclusion of language supporting or opposing election of a candidate for public office, passage of a school levy or similar political activity is outlawed.

The prosecutor, who like Kasich is a Republican, denied that his investigation was politically motivated. “Neither Gov. Kasich, the Ohio Republican Party, the Warren County Republican Party, local legislators, nor any of their representatives had anything to do with my decision to initiate an investigation,” he said.

Elam said yesterday that his position on the governor’s school-funding plan hasn’t changed, but he regrets including the campaign statement in his letter.

“I intended to inform our parents and the community that we aren’t going to get a big windfall of money like everyone was saying because that’s not the way it turned out,” Elam said. “We have a levy on (the May ballot) and I didn’t want the community to think we were putting a levy on at the same time we were going to get a lot of new money from the state.”